you need not hesitate. As you wished for something worn, I can only say, that it has been worn oftener and longer than the other. It is of Venetian manufacture; and the only peculiarity about it is, that it could only be obtained at or from Venice. At Genoa they have none of the same kind. I also enclose a ring, which I would wish Alfred to keep; it is too large to wear; but it is formed of lave, and so far adapted to the fire of his years and character. You will perhaps have the goodness to acknowledge the receipt of this note, and send back the pin (for good luck's sake), which I shall value much more for having been a night in your custody. "Ever and faithfully your obliged, &c. "P.S. I hope your nerves are well to-day, and will continue to flourish." In the meantime the preparations for his romantic expedition were in progress. With the aid of his banker and very sincere friend, Mr. Barry, of Genoa, he was enabled to raise the large sums of money necessary for his supply ;-10,000 crowns in specie, and 40,000 crowns in bills of exchange, being the amount of what he took with him, and and a portion of this having been raised upon his furniture and books, on which Mr. Barry, as I understand, advanced a sum far beyond their worth. An English brig, the Hercules, had been freighted to convey himself and his suite, which consisted, at this time, of Count Gamba, Mr. Trelawney, Dr. Bruno, and eight domestics. There were also aboard five horses, sufficient arms and ammunition for the use of his own party, two onepounders belonging to his schooner, the Bolivar, which he had left at Genoa, and medicine enough for the supply of a thousand men for a year. The following letter to the Secretary of the Greek Committee announces his approaching departure, LETTER 523. TO MR. BOWRING. "July 7, 1823. "We sail on the 12th for Greece.-I have had a letter from Mr. Blaquiere, too long for present transcription, but very satisfactory. The Greek Government expects me without delay." "In conformity to the desires of Mr. B. and other correspondents in Greece, I have to suggest, with all deference to the Committee, that a remittance of even ' ten thousand pounds only' (Mr. B.'s expression) would be of the greatest service to the Greek Government at present. I have also to recommend strongly the attempt of a loan, for which there will be offered a sufficient security by deputies now on their way to England. In the meantime, I hope that the Committee will be enabled to do something effectual. "For my own part, I mean to carry up, in cash or credits, above eight, and nearly nine thousand pounds sterling, which I am enabled to do by funds I have in Italy, and credits in England. Of this sum I must Y necessarily reserve a portion for the subsistence of myself and suite; the rest I am willing to apply in the manner which seems most likely to be useful to the cause-having of course some guarantee, or assurance, it will not be misapplied to any individual speculation. that "If I remain in Greece, which will mainly depend upon the presumed probable utility of my presence there, and of the opinion of the Greeks themselves as to its propriety-in short, if I am welcome to them, I shall continue, during my residence at least, to apply such portions of my income, present and future, as may forward the object that is to say, what I can spare for that purpose. Privations I can, or at least could once bear-abstinence I am accustomed to—and as to fatigue, I was once a tolerable traveller. What I may be now, I cannot tell-but I will try. "I await the commands of the Committee.-Address to Genoa-the letters will be forwarded me, wherever I may be, by my bankers, Messrs. Webb and Barry. It would have given me pleasure to have had some more defined instructions before I went, but these, of course, rest at the option of the Committee. I have the honour to be, "P.S. Great anxiety is expressed for a printing press and types, &c. I have not the time to provide them, but recommend this to the notice of the Committee. I presume the types must, partly at least, be Greek : they wish to publish papers, and perhaps a Journal, probably in Romaic, with Italian translations." All was now ready; and on the 13th of July himself and his whole party slept on board the Hercules. About sunrise the next morning they succeeded in clearing the port; but there was little wind, and they remained in sight of Genoa the whole day. The night was a bright moonlight, but the wind had become stormy and adverse, and they were, for a short time, in serious danger. Lord Byron, who remained on deck during the storm, was employed anxiously, with the aid of such of his suite as were not disabled by sea-sickness from helping him in preventing further mischief to the horses, which, having been badly secured, had broken loose and injured each other. After making head against the wind for three or four hours, the captain was at last obliged to steer back to Genoa, and re-entered the port at six in the morning. On landing again, after this unpromising commencement of his voyage, Lord Byron (says Count Gamba) "appeared thoughtful, and remarked that he considered a bad beginning a favourable omen.". It has been already, I believe, mentioned that, among the superstitions in which he chose to indulg, the supposed unluckiness of Friday, as a day for the commencement of any work, was one by which he, almost always, allowed himself to be influenced. Soon after his arrival at Pisa, a lady of his acquaintance happening to meet him on the road from her house as she was herself returning thither, and supposing that he had been to make her a visit, requested that he would go back with "I have not been to your house," he answered; " for, just be her. fore I got to the door, I remembered that it was Friday; and, not liking to make my first visit on a Friday, I turned back." It is even related of him that he once sent away a Genoese tailor who brought him home a new coat on the same ominous day. With all this, strange to say, he set sail for Greece on a Friday :—and though, by those who have any leaning to this superstitious fancy, the result may be thought but too sadly confirmatory of the omen, it is plain that either the influence of the superstition over his own mind was slight, or, in the excitement of self-devotion under which he now acted, was forgotten. In truth, notwithstanding his encouraging speech to Count Gamba, the forewarning he now felt of his approaching doom seems to have been far too deep and serious to need the aid of any such accessory. Having expressed a wish, on relanding, to visit his own palace, which he had left to the care of Mr. Barry during his absence, and from which Madame Guiccioli had early that morning departed, he now proceeded thither, accompanied by Count Gamba alone. "His conversation," says 66 this gentleman, was somewhat melancholy on our way to Albaro: he spoke much of his past life, and of the uncertainty of the future.— 'Where, said he, shall we be in a year ?'—It looked (adds his friend) like a melancholy foreboding; for, on the same day, of the same month, in the next year, he was carried to the tomb of his ancestors." It took nearly the whole of the day to repair the damages of their vessel; and the greater part of this interval was passed by Lord Byron, in company with Mr. Barry, at some gardens near the city. Here his conversation, as this gentleman informs me, took the same gloomy turn. That he had not fixed to go to England, in preference, seemed one of his deep regrets; and so hopeless were the views he expressed of the whole enterprise before him, that, as it appeared to Mr. Barry, nothing but a devoted sense of duty and honour could have determined him to persist in it. In the evening of that day they set sail ;—and now, fairly launched in the cause, and disengaged, as it were, from his former state of existence, the natural power of his spirit to shake off pressure, whether from within or without, began instantly to display itself. According to the report of one of his fellow-voyagers, though so clouded while on shore, no sooner did he find himself, once more, bounding over the waters, than all the light and life of his better nature shone forth. In the breeze that now bore him towards his beloved Greece, the voice of his youth seemed again to speak. Before the titles of hero, of benefactor, to which he now aspired, that of poet, however pre-eminent, faded into nothing. His love of freedom, his generosity, his thirst for the new and adventurous, —all were re-awakened; and even the bodings that still lingered at the bottom of his heart but made the course before him more precious from bis consciousness of its brevity, and from the high and self-ennobling resolution he had now taken to turn what yet remained of it gloriously to account. "Parte, e porta un desio d'eterna ed alma Gir fra i nemici-ivi o cipresso o palma After passage of five days, they reached Leghorn, 'at which place it was thought necessary to touch, for the purpose of taking on board a supply of gunpowder, and other English goods, not to be had elsewhere. It would have been the wish of Lord Byron, in the new path he had now marked out for himself, to disconnect from his name, if possible, all those poetical associations, which, by throwing a character of romance over the step he was now taking, might have a tendency, as he feared, to impair its practical utility; and it is, perhaps, hardly saying too much for his sincere zeal in the cause to assert, that he would willingly at this moment have sacrificed his whole fame, as poet, for even the prospect of an equivalent renown, as philanthropist and liberator. How vain, however, was the thought that he could thus supersede his own glory, or cause the fame of the lyre to be forgotten in that of the sword, was made manifest to him by a mark of homage which reached him, while at Leghorn, from the hands of one of the only two men of the age who could contend with him in the universality of his literary fame. Already, as has been seen, an exchange of courtesies, founded upon mutual admiration, had taken place between Lord Byron and the great poet of Germany, Goethe. Of this intercourse between two such men, -the former as brief a light in the world's eyes, as the latter has been long and steadily luminous, -an account has been by the venerable survivor put on record, which, as a fit preliminary to the letter I am about to give, I shall here insert in as faithful a translation as it has been in my power to procure. GOETHE AND BYRON. "The German poet, who, down to the latest period of his long life, had been always anxious to acknowledge the merits of his literary predecessors and contemporaries, because he has always considered this to be the surest means of cultivating his own powers, could not but have his attention attracted to the great talent of the noble Lord almost from his earliest appearance, and uninterruptedly watched the progress of his mind throughout the great works which he unceasingly produced. It was immediately perceived by him that the public appreciation of his poetical merits kept pace with the rapid succession of his writings. The joyful sympathy of others would have been perfect, had not the poet, by a life marked by self-dissatisfaction, and the indulgence of strong passions, disturbed the enjoyment which his infinite genius produced. But his German admirer was not led astray by this, or prevented from following with close attention both his works and his life in all their eccentricity. These astonished him the more, as he found in the experience of past ages no element for the calculation of so eccentric an orbit. "These endeavours of the German did not remain unknown to the English man, of which his poems contain unambiguous proofs; and he also availed himself of the means afforded by various travellers, to forward some friendly salutation to his unknown admirer. At length a manuscript Dedication of Sardanapalus, in the most complimentary terms, was forwarded to him, with an obliging enquiry whether it might be prefixed to the tragedy. The German, who, at his advanced age, was conscious of his own powers and of their effects, could only gratefully and modestly consider this Dedication as the expression of an inexhaustible intellect, deeply feeling and creating its own object. He was by no means dissatisfied when, after a long delay, Sardanapalus appeared without the Dedication; and was made happy by the possession of a fac-simile of it, engraved on stone, which he considered a precious memorial. "The noble Lord, however, did not abandon his purpose of proclaiming to the world his valued kindness towards his German contemporary and brother poet, a precious evidence of which was placed in front of the tragedy of Werner. It will be readily believed, when so unhoped for an honour was conferred upon the German poet,- -one seldom experienced in life, and that too from one himself so highly distinguished, he was by no means reluctant to express the high esteem and sympathising sentiment with which his unsurpassed contemporary had inspired him. The task was difficult, and was found the more so, the more it was contemplated;—for what can be said of one whose unfathomable qualities are not to be reached by words? But when a young gentleman, Mr. Sterling, of pleasing person and excellent character, in the spring of 1823, on a journey from Genoa to Weimar, delivered a few lines under the hand of the great man as an introduction, and when the report was soon after spread that the noble Peer was about to direct his great mind and various power to deeds of sublime daring beyond the ocean, there appeared to be no time left for further delay, and the following lines were hastily written : *— "Ein freundlich Wort kommt eines nach dem andern 'Es ruft uns auf zum Edelsten zu wandern, "Wie soll ich dem, den ich so lang begleitet, "Wohl sey ihm doch, wenn er sich selbst empfindet! Und wie ich ihn erkannt mög' er sich kennen. "The verses reached Genoa, but the excellent friend to whom they were addressed was already gone, and to a distance, as it appeared, inaccessible. Driven back, however, by storms, he landed at Leghorn, where these cordial lines reached him just as he was about to embark, on the 24th of July, 1823. He had barely time to answer by a well-filled page, which the possessor has preserved among his most precious papers, as the worthiest evidence of the connexion that had been formed. Affecting and delightful as was such a document, and justifying the most lively hopes, it has acquired now the greatest, * I insert the verses in the original language, as an English version gives but a very imperfect notion of their meaning. |
